


burning honey

by inkwelled



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Betrothal Necklace (Avatar), F/M, Fire Lady Katara, Fire Lord Zuko, Implied Sexual Content, Marriage Proposal, Married Life, Morning After, Post-Canon, Post-Coital Cuddling, Prompt Fill, Sunrises, Sunsets, alternate title: how many different ways can i say blue and red
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-08 15:53:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20838107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkwelled/pseuds/inkwelled
Summary: "I want them all."Katara shifts to her elbow so she can see his face better, framed in dark red silk, face relaxed with the slight pull of sleep. Her eyebrows furrow. "Want all of what?""Sunrises," he murmurs, exhales warm against her hip. She shivers in the most pleasant of ways - Zuko's always been talented at lighting fire under her skin and this is no different but instead of the sparking inferno of last night it's rather flickering embers. "I want sunrises, sunsets. With you. Whether they're here or at the South Pole; anywhere with you."





	burning honey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [enfystano](https://archiveofourown.org/users/enfystano/gifts).

> i know this isn't the longest but!! this is for enfystano on twitter, who requested _"i want to watch the sun set and the sun rise with you for the rest of my life"_. this is for you!! i hope it's everything you wanted :)
> 
> title ; [burning honey](https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2609478/burning-honey/) by robbin lemmen

Katara wakes slowly, a luxury she's embraced willingly and fully since the end of the war. When she blinks blearily her vision is eclipsed by sunlight spilling across red silk and she groans. Stretching until her whole body to her toes shakes with pleasant tremors, she sits up and gazes out the large windows to where the sunrise is painting the sky a brilliant swath of burgundy, sienna, and gold.

The balcony doors are open, letting in the cooler autumn air that's started to settle over the Fire Nation, battling away the summer humidity, and she's grateful. The curtains flutter - sheer, white things instead of the heavy red velvet when Zuko first returned home and cat owls yowl in the distance.

Although she's undressed, only covered by the sheets of the bed, Katara finds the slight chill of the air inviting and inhales slowly, letting her eyes close. 

The bed shifts beside her and she smiles softly when two arms snake around her waist. "Come back t' bed," Zuko - _ Fire Lor _ _d_ Zuko, her  _ husband  _ \- slurs, words slow with sleep.

Laughing quietly, she turns in his embrace.

" _ I rise with the sun, _ huh?" Katara chuckles and Zuko buries his face in her hip, groaning. She can't help but card her fingers through his unruly hair, rumpled and tangled as silence wraps around them. The inky strands are long and as soft as their bedsheets and her husband's words when he mouths them against her skin. "You should see this. It's a beautiful sunrise."

"The Fire Nation  _ does _ have the best sunrises."

She hums in agreement and lightly scrapes her fingernails against his scalp. "You should see the South Pole's sunsets, though - sometimes you can see the lights in the distance if you're up high enough. The way the colors reflect off the sea, dying it orange and pink...it's beautiful."

"I want them all."

Katara shifts to her elbow so she can see his face better, framed in dark red silk, face relaxed with the slight pull of sleep. Her eyebrows furrow. "Want all of what?"

"Sunrises," he murmurs, exhales warm against her hip. She shivers in the most pleasant of ways - Zuko's always been talented at lighting fire under her skin and this is no different but instead of the sparking inferno of last night it's rather flickering embers. "I want sunrises, sunsets. With you. Whether they're here or at the South Pole; anywhere with you."

Suddenly she's blinking back tears and tilting his chin up with two fingers to kiss him as gently as she wants to hold him. It's as easy as breathing to slip back under the covers and his hands, ever-steady and warm, splay against her back as she turns them on their sides. She shivers at the sensation and draws him close by wrapping her arms around his neck until their feet tangle together again.

The warmth under her skin isn't a wildfire but instead a campfire, like the ones he lit when their little group stayed in caves and on beaches, hiding from the Fire Nation under their own noses. Katara can't help but giggle at the memory - she once ran from the Fire Nation and now she's  _ Fire Lady. _

Fire Lord Zuko's  _ wife,  _ the second-if-not-as-equal-to-him powerful monarch of the Fire Nation. 

They've both worked tirelessly for this moment; for all the moments from his proposal all those months ago to the night before; to the night before, to when Katara was able to finally go to bed in the same bed as Zuko. To this second, when she runs her tongue against the seam of his chapped lips and he opens like a fire lily under her touch.

But so unlike the fickle, rarely-blooming flowers, he blossoms eagerly and stays that way. Wandering, sated hands roam bare skin, trading soft moans of encouragement like the rings of the evening before; the same rings that sit on their respective fingers and the necklace at the base of her throat.

Zuko rolls them over to hover above her on elbows pressed into the mattress and she lets her arms notch behind his neck. There's something in his eyes she can't quite decipher but understands perfectly when he leans down. So lightly she could almost mistake it for the breeze through the open windows, his lips brush above the silk of the engagement necklace that now gleams at her throat.

"Beautiful," he murmurs against her skin and she arches into the touch, "like the sunrise."

He pulls back for a moment to admire her and his breath catches; she's  _ absolutely  _ stunning. The burgundy silk of their bed looks heavenly against her dark skin, freckled and flushed in places and against the hollow of her neck sits the engagement necklace he had spent countless mornings holed up in his study carving.

Although engagement necklaces weren't common in the Southern Water Tribe - rather hailing from their sister tribe - Zuko had still presented her with the piece. "You don't have to wear it if you don't want to," he had murmured, fingers shaking where he held the necklace like it was the most precious thing in the world. 

Although she's now the Fire Lady of the Fire Nation, the ribbon of the engagement necklace isn't the traditional burgundy like the robes in their shared closet. Instead, the strip is a deep navy as rich as the ocean floor, the equivalent color as shadows on icebergs, the same shade of her eyes when she's angry and the seas rise with her rage, pulled by slim fingers and guided with a steady hand. 

_ That one,  _ he had told the merchant as soon as he saw it. The woman had pulled the spool from the shelf and he nodded as his fingers skirted over the fabric.  _ It's perfect. _

It's a reminder Katara's as much Water Tribe as she is Fire Nation, now. She's Fire Lady just as much as she is the daughter of Chief Hakoda. Just like everything else about her - the hair strands separated by two small beads at her temple that loop down to her ears accompanied by the topknot skewed with two twin kanzashi. The mix of the deep azure sleeves of her outer robes embroidered with the three-tonged flame of their land, the amber detail of the neckline. Everything about her appearance is a carefully-curated marriage of two cultures in the best of ways.

The real pride of the necklace, though, was the carved stone stitched to the middle of the ribbon.

_ Gypsum _ , he had called the stone at the middle of the necklace when she asked, voice thick with tears, as she lifted her hair so he could he fasten it around her neck and her fingers traced the carvings on it.  _ It forms in lagoons when the ocean water evaporates and after volcano eruptions. It's soft, so it can be molded if you need it to be. _

She had felt the water inside the rock, willing and ready beneath her hand - a marriage of both fire and water at the hollow of her throat, a reminder of everything they had gone through and would now face,  _ together _ . Katara had turned in his embrace then and kissed him until the salt on her cheeks mixed with his.

A thumb ghosts across his cheek and Zuko realizes he's been staring. Knowing, lingering fingertips cup his scarred cheek and Katara's eyes are worried. "Is everything okay?"

"Everything is perfect," he says with his next breath and kisses her like she's the air in his lungs. If she's the moon then he's the sun and every pass is an eclipse he relishes.

"I love you," he whispers later when their bodies are pressed together and the sun burns high in the sky. The colors of the sunrise have faded and they'll be pounding on the doors of their chambers, soon, a nation waiting for their Fire Lord and Lady but for now, the morning is theirs.

Zuko rests easy in the knowledge there will be a sunset, and another sunrise, a sunset, a repeat, a promise of another day spent by her side.

His wife's smile is more beautiful than any sunrise, he is certain. "I love you too," she murmurs and the stone at her neck glitters. Katara's hands wrap around him like a vow, as steady and warm as the noonday sun.

He loves nothing more than sunrises and sunsets by her side.

**Author's Note:**

> i got the information about gypsum from [this website](https://mineralseducationcoalition.org/minerals-database/gypsum/)


End file.
